If Pepper required 334 studio hours, how long did The White Album take? Below is a chart documenting the known recording studio times for The White Album, as dictated in Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. This list does not include the recordings of "Hey Jude" that took place on 07.29-08.06 (which was released as a single, but not on The White Album); but it does include the recordings for songs that were originally considered for inclusion but ultimately left off the album for reasons other than it was released as a single (most notably "Not Guilty").

So how does this compare with Pepper? Well, it depends on how you look at it. In terms of total studio time, The White Album took almost more than twice as long to make (709.17 hours vs. 333.75 hours). But, given that The White Album is a double album where Pepper is not, that makes sense. In terms of number of days, The White Album took 81 days' work in the studio over 141 calendar days; Pepper took 50 days' work in the studio over 137 calendar days. And taking number of tracks into consideration, The White Album averages less time per track (23.64 hours) than Pepper (25.67 hours).

CITATIONSLewisohn, Mark. The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Story of the Abbey Road Years 1962-1970. Harmony Books, a division of Crown Publishers, New York, NY, 1988.